Legal Briefs

> In 1972 a federal court ordered the predominantly black city school system in Richmond, Va., to merge with mainly white suburban schools. A court of appeals reversed the order, and the Supreme Court then agreed to decide the controversial issue. But when it finally acted last week, the court left the basic question unanswered. Justice Lewis Powell, as a former member of the Richmond school board, disqualified himself, and the remaining Justices split 4-4, which had the effect of leaving the appeals court reversal in force. The Richmond non-decision was the first time since Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that the court failed to act in favor of suits advancing public school integration. Final word on whether a city and its suburbs can be required to merge their schools awaits action on one of a dozen similar integration suits currently pending before lower courts throughout the country.

> Though they all admitted illegally destroying draft records, 17 of the anti war Camden 28 were found innocent.

Their acquittal may well have resulted from Federal Judge Clarkson Fisher's instructions to the jury about the perils of entrapment by the Government. A paid FBI informer had been extremely active in the 1971 raid, supplying tools, strategy and training. Though the Supreme Court recently took a more tolerant view of government agent activity, the judge told the jury that it could acquit if it found "overreaching Government participation" that was "offensive to the basic standards of decency and shocking to the universal sense of justice." The jury deliberated over four days and finally returned not-guilty ver dicts on all counts. Though only 17 of the 28 stood trial, the Government said it would recommend dropping charges against the remaining defendants. It was a "verdict against the war," said Assis tant U.S. Attorney John Barry.

> When Robert Berston's father died in 1967, he left a $100,000 trust fund which his son was to receive at age 45. If the son died before then, with out having any children, the money would go to a school. Berston's mother, from whom his father was divorced in 1946, was effectively excluded from inheriting the trust. But Berston, now 29, single and living in Minnesota, wanted to provide for her. In an inspired, topsy turvy legal gambit, he moved to adopt his mother, who is 53. A trial judge denied his petition apparently because the adoption was merely designed to frustrate the father's will. But the Minne sota Supreme Court, by a 5-2 vote, held that state law "so unequivocally authorizes . . . the adoption of 'an adult' by 'any person' " that Berston's petition must be granted. The court went out of its way to add that it was not deciding the inheritance issue, which means that the school or any children Berston may some day have could still attack the mother's right to inherit if her son (i.e., her adoptive father) dies within the next 16 years.

> The jury really socked it to them:

$20,000 in compensatory damages and $1,000,000 in punitive damages to be paid by SCM Corp. (formerly known as Smith-Corona Marchant, Inc.) be cause two of its employees had sabotaged a rival's duplicating machine (TIME, March 5). Now the trial judge has overthrown the jury's verdict on a number of grounds: insufficient evidence, excessive damage awards and irregularities in the trial. Judge Robert Drewes seemed particularly concerned about the plaintiff lawyer's references to the corporate defendant "as an entity having no heart or soul and which can be reached only through its pocket-book." Drewes' decision was a counter weight to contemporary trends in which juries have been urged to protect consumers by severely punishing errant corporations, and the plaintiff plans to appeal.

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